Welcome to Westlake Golf Club

Hello All!
 

I’m back from my leave and really looking forward to a very busy three months ahead. We have festival week at the end of May, the Westlake Open in June, the Westlake Foursomes in July, 2013/14 budgets to prepare as well as the annual subscription invoices for next year. Lots of work on the table for us and some really fantastic golf for you to look forward to.

I will go through these scores and results for you.

The Top 16 matchplay quarter finals were concluded on Saturday. Results were as follows:

A Division: Barry Havenga beat Pietie Smith 5&3. On Wednesday Ross Callaghan beat Paul Bezuidenhout 5&4 in a semi final match.

B Division: Colin Haytread beat Martin Hill 2&1; Steve Fargher beat Richard Perrow on the 6th extra hole; Glen Gibbons was given a walk over by Bruce Maxwell.

C Division: John Papademetriou beat Nelson da Silva 6&4; Jack Brownrigg beat Bob Walters 2&1; Steve o’Sullivan beat David Petrie on the 22nd hole; Gordon Scott beat Adam Helmbold 5&4

The semi final fixtures which will be played on Saturday 25th are as follows;
A Division: Barry Havenga v Duane Galloway
B Division: Glen Gibbons v Steve Fargher and Colin Haytread v Dave Gleeson
C Division: John Papademetriou v Jack Brownrigg and Steve O’Sullivan v Gordon Scott.

While on the topic of matchplay, the club Knockout Matchplay semi finals will be played this weekend. The two matches are Mark Newling v Robin Misplon and Trevor Norris-Jones v Wayne McKenzie.

I always neglect the ladies matchplay results and fixtures and want to address this glaring omission.

The ladies summer handicap final was played on Saturday. Joanna Russell beat Morag Burrell to be crowned the 2013 champion.

The ladies are also playing the Irene Troskie match play. This is the match play trophy for the Top 16 players in the Ladies Club Championships. First round results are as follows:

Karen Burns beat Mary Gillett; Fahiema Enous beat Marion Smith; Joanna Russell beat Bronwyn Gray; Jean Stewart beat Sonja Sleep; Isobel Firmin beat Denise Higgenbotham; Lotta Kuhlmann beat Loriel Kiebler; Marlene Bromhall beat Kirsten Agnew; Tracey Gordon beat Maureen Weimar. The quarter final are set to be played by 7 June 2013.

The Ladies play league matches this coming Tuesday. Here are the fixtures and league positions for our teams. The format changes from singles matchplay to foursomes for the remainder of the league season.

A reserve: We play Royal Cape at Steenberg. Westlake are currently first in their section of the A reserve league. Royal Cape are second, so it’s a crucial match.
B League: We play Rondebosch and Atlantic beach in a three way match, at Atlantic Beach. Our team is currently fourth, 2 points behind leaders Parow.
B Reserve: We play Royal Cape and Milnerton at Erinvale. The team is first on the log, 1 point ahead of Steenberg.
C League: we play Mowbray at Durbanville. We are 2 points behind the joint leaders Clovelly and Mowbray, in third position.
C Reserve: The team is in second place. Two points behind the leaders Atlantic Beach. We play Metropolitan at Milnerton.

All these results and logs are available on the Western Province website at www.wpgu.co.za if you are interested in more detail.

Good luck to all of you, go out there and do your best.

The ladies also played their Sanlam Cancer Challenge competition on Tuesday. Lotta Kuhlmann won the A division with 42 points, Gail Thane was the B Division winner with 39 points, and Barbara Spagnoletti won the C Division on 39 points, beating Pat Olver in a count out. Well done ladies and thank you for your support of this worthy cause.

My last golf story involves a bit of history and ends with a potential bright future for Westlake Golf Club. I have looked through the history books of Westlake. In our history we have won a limited amount of Scratch league trophies. The victory in the Premier League in 2004 being our greatest achievement. In the past few years we have been competitive in this league, but have been outclassed at the end of the season by the likes of Bellville, Strand and Milnerton. Two years ago we won the Winter league at Erinvale, and we have won the Newmark Shield (now no longer played for), and the Bradshaw Cup on 4 and 3 occasions respectfully. The Bradshaw Cup was reintroduced by WPGU a few years ago, and is now played as a foursomes knockout trophy. This year Westlake entered two teams of four players to participate. One of our sides lost in the first round on a count out by one shot. The other side made it to the final to compete against Strand and Milnerton. We came second to Strand, who made birdie on the last hole to beat us by one shot.

I want to congratulate all our players and thank them for their efforts. The teams were Mark Segers, Aaron Russell, Paul Bezuidenhout and John Laurie as well as Christian Helmbold, Tom Main, Ross Callaghan and Zach Miller. Well done guys we are all proud of your achievements.

The next WPGU fixture is the winter league at Erinvale. This will be played on 26th May. It is a 36 hole event. Teams consist of 4 players, with the 3 best gross scores counting towards the team total. We are going to enter two teams into the competition.

The strength of our Premier players is improving and we know have a pool of good young golfers who have an opportunity to perform well at Amateur level. Most clubs hold their Opens in autumn and winter and I can’t wait to announce that a Westlake member has won one of these events. It will also be great to have some of our members representing Western Province in the annual inter provincial in September.

Festival week is almost upon us. The timesheets came out on Friday evening and were filled up almost immediately. We are going to increase the size of the fields where possible to accommodate those players on the waiting list. Thank you for your support thus far.

This Saturday morning is the Jeff Vickerman Memorial Day. Jeff Sternslow has arranged the day, as well as the draw and collected some money for prizes. There will be a grab and go in place on Saturday morning. The Grab and Go will continue through winter

Grab and Go for Saturday morning and afternoon will start from Saturday 25th May. All the days of our festival week will also be a grab and go so that we can accommodate more players in our fields. Grab and Go will become a permanent fixture on a Saturday throughout winter after festival week is completed.

The major fund raising effort is the cash draw, which will take place on Saturday evening at the big bash. We are selling 800 tickets at R 100 each, and will be paying out a total of R 35,000 in cash. There are still some books available for sale. If you don’t want a whole book, we will gladly sell you a single ticket. Just pop in to the office and get a ticket. Those of you who have taken books, please could we ask you to get them all sold, and return the stubs, as well as the proceeds to Mark. Once again thank you for your support.

This week we received new cards from Handicaps Network Africa. We have linked all these cards to your membership profile and as a result your old green cards will not work on the Point of Sale system. Your new cards are available in the office, just bring in your old card so we can swop them. The new card will work on our internal system.

We have had problems in the past with the POS system not being able to read the old green cards. The tests we have conducted on the new cards have been positive and we are able to read the new cards at all four retail points in the club house. This means that we will be able to switch off the override ability that the cashier / barman staff have at present. This will be done on 3 June. What this will mean for you the member is that if you do not have your card with you at the club, you will not qualify for your members discount when buying food and beverage.

For those members that are not handicapped at Westlake, please bring us your new cards once you receive them from your handicapping club, so that we can link them to your personal profile. We are also looking at the possibility of replacing old cards for our non-playing members.

Please contact Amy, Beth or myself if you need some assistance with your cards.

The Friday evening draw results were as follows:
10th May 2013
Whisky Draw
Bells:- No21 Tony Woof
No 1 Maurice Grant
No 4 Di Sidney

Special Reserve:- No 19 Mark Gordon
Johnny Walker Black Label:
No12 Simon Russell
No 14 Mike Dugtig

Ada’s Carvery Draw:- No 39 Chris Abbott
Westlake Draw R4360.00 next week R4480.00
No 473 Dick Davidson (not present)

This weekend we will draw the May 100 Club as well as the monthly Leg of Lamb draw. Results will be posted in the Club house and published in next week’s newsletter.

Those of you who have been down to the club this weekend will have noticed that we have removed the shade cloth over the forecourt. We do this every winter to protect the shade cloth from any potential winter storms and the north wind. It will be put up again in September

We are trying to improve our communication with members and guest of Westlake, so that you have a reliable source of news and information, and hopefully you are made more aware of what is happening. We are updating the website more frequently and are using Facebook on a more regular basis. We have a very active facebook page, and I would encourage you to check up on the page, leave your comments on a regular basis. Facebook is also a good tool to use as a forum for discussion if you have a topic that you would like to discuss publically. We posted a picture of Raymond’s three dogs on there this Monday, and have had a great response. So get on to Facebook to have a look and see for yourself. If you are not keen on social media, we will continue to use the Newsletter as our premier means of communication with our members and friends.

We had a new staff member join us from the beginning of April. Albert Jordaan has joined the Pro Shop staff. Albert has signed on with the PGA to do his apprenticeship under Nic Lochner, with the hope of qualifying as a PGA professional. I would like to extend a belated welcome to Albert, and to wish him well at Westlake.

We also had a mild dispute this past weekend regarding what we show on the televisions in the bars.

The committee made a decision a few years ago that we would give preference to matches that involved our national teams in cricket and rugby, super xv rugby and national cricket and rugby matches. This is the preference of the majority. This arrangement is obviously flexible, but we must take into consideration the wishes of the majority of members.

Thank you to all of you who have welcomed me back from a short spell of leave. It was great to have a few days off, rest up and clear the head. It has been a very busy and active period for me from the beginning of the year to the end of the Club Championships.

Finally, I would like to say goodbye to Dale and Paul Matthews. Dale and Paul are well known to those who play Sunday and Mixed Golf. Dale was also a regular Tuesday afternoon combatant. They have relocated to Abu Dhabi and want to wish them well. I will miss their quirky sense of humour, love of life and in Dale’s case her misguided passion for the All Blacks and the Auckland Blues. Here’s wishing you all the success in your new venture and remember to send all those who ask you about golf in Cape Town to the Cape’s most popular course.